


Ordinary Vanity

by willowoftheriver



Series: fearfully made [2]
Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Always a Different Sex, Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Bastard Children, Childbirth, Discussion of Abortion, F/M, Female Balinor, Female Merlin, Genderbending, Half-Sibling Incest, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Death in Childbirth, Incest, POV Outsider, Pregnancy, Secrets, Sequel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-03
Updated: 2016-06-03
Packaged: 2018-07-11 22:02:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,395
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7072258
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/willowoftheriver/pseuds/willowoftheriver
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Gaius keeps secrets too well.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ordinary Vanity

**Author's Note:**

> This more or less adheres to the plot of the first two seasons and then goes off track.

When Merlin first comes to Camelot, walking into his office and rearranging his furniture without touching it, he’s horrified, and he cannot, for the life of him, understand what his sister was thinking in sending her here. Usually Hunith is reasonably intelligent, but sending a naïve teenage girl into a kingdom where magic was punishable on pain of death when she almost seeped magic from every pore? Pure _idiocy._

It was practically a death wish in and of itself, but there were other matters to consider, as well—Merlin didn’t bear a striking resemblance to her mother (she was too long and lanky for that) but Balinora was still there, lurking under the surface of her features, waiting for anyone to take a nice, long look. Dragonlords were all born in the blood, something Uther knew very well. Balinora’s daughter would be a Dragonlord just like her mother. Did Hunith think he would have mercy because Merlin was his bastard? How could she, when he’d already tried to kill the girl once, before she was even born?

In her letter, Hunith expressed anxiety about Merlin remaining in Ealdor, her fear that people were starting to figure out the secret. She said that she sent Merlin to him in the hopes of him teaching her to better control her magic, thus facilitating an easier, more normal life.

Gaius wants to send her back. He doesn’t think he can handle this girl, this prodigy that can perform magic without studying or incanting, that sometimes does it so instinctively she can’t even help herself. In Camelot, all that can result in is a premature death, and he doesn’t want her blood on his hands.

But, for some reason, he holds his tongue. Maybe it’s because of that resemblance to Balinora, long lost Balinora who he never got to say so many things to, or maybe it’s because her smile is wide and bright and lights up his dank office, pushing away the loneliness and the guilt.

He never comes to regret letting her stay. She becomes the daughter he never had, and she’s all that a father could ask for: an intelligent, faithful girl willing to lift some of his workload, and even if he is a little disappointed she doesn’t show much interest or aptitude in medicine, that’s okay.

He’s sure, though, that she’s pushing him towards an early grave, his heart drawing a bit closer to seizing each time she ends up risking her secret or her life in some misadventure. If it’s not a magical creature, it’s a spell or a sorcerer. And if it’s none of that, then it’s Arthur in mortal peril.

Merlin will go to any lengths for Arthur. Gaius learns this when she drinks the poison, willingly laying down her life in exchange for his. What he doesn’t expect is for Arthur to reciprocate, to run headlong into almost certain death in the faint hope of saving her.

He’s so relieved in the aftermath of it all that he doesn’t realize for quite some time that he’s faintly bothered by their actions. They haven’t even known each other that long, and they’re both completely unaware of their familial connection, yet they’re both willing to die to save each other.

The devotion seems a bit strange, but he writes it off. Maybe they know, on some subconscious level, and even if they don’t, it’s good that they get along. It might make the revelation easier, if it ever comes.

But he’s still uncomfortable, for some indiscernible reason. With her, with him . . . her with him. He watches their bond strengthen and solidify, forged through strife. She begins to not bother with any of the pretences of servitude, and where once Arthur might have remarked on it and gotten a slightly sarcastic _‘Sire’_ in return, now there is nothing. He takes her everywhere with him, to places a _man_ servant shouldn’t accompany his master, much less a _maid_ servant—out on the hunt and to field exercises with the knights and even, on occasion, into battle. And once back in the castle, they rarely separate, her waiting on the edge of the field during training and him hanging around her while she works, like a shadow.

Arthur becomes less of the bully he was before she arrived. She talks him out of his blind rage after Ygraine’s revelations, where his own father could not.

She sacrifices for Arthur. She does whatever is necessary. She lies and betrays and kills, all for him, even though it’s against her nature.

She poisons Morgana to save him.

It’s soon after that that Gaius notices Arthur isn’t wearing his signet ring anymore. Merlin has it. It only fits her thumb, and she keeps it turned down so only the gold band shows, but one day he manages to catch a glimpse of the seal on the other side.

That’s when misapprehension turns to fear.

He fears their closeness. He fears their ignorance.

So he tries to start swaying Merlin away from him. He hates to think of it as poisoning her mind, but there’s hardly another phrase to describe it. He subtly brings up class differences, kingly duties, the hedonistic trappings of nobility and royalty. He reminds her in as many ways as he can that she doesn’t need any extra scrutiny from Uther. He hints that she might be better matched with someone who possesses magic than someone who doesn’t.

It flies over her head. She’s too preoccupied with predicting Morgana’s next move to read into anything anyone says to her.

But still he continues, beating around the bush, talking in circles and riddles to avoid the questions bluntness would bring.

Until, one morning, he goes to the door of Merlin’s room to wake her up for the day, as is their routine. His knocks don’t get a reply, so he opens the door and finds her bed hasn’t been slept in.

He goes through the rest of the morning in a daze, faintly nauseous, hoping that she and Arthur have just run away on some fool quest again. Those hopes are dashed, however, when she bustles in around midday, wearing yesterday’s clothes, grinning like a madwoman and asking if he has any errands for her.

When he asks her where she’s been, she tells him she and Arthur and some of the knights went out on an all night hunting trip. He’s created such a good little liar that he almost believes her, but that evening as he makes his rounds with potions he asks Sir Leon if this trip actually happened, and he tells him it didn’t.

Gaius decides that the time for subtlety has long passed. A line might’ve already been crossed, but he has to stop her before it goes any further, no matter how much it hurts her.

He stays up that night in his office, waiting for her. Usually she comes in time for dinner, but it’s not unheard of for her to only just get back once he’s already asleep.

What he doesn’t expect is to be waiting until an hour before dawn. That’s when she comes breezing in, smiling even wider than she had been earlier in the day, her hair mussed and her lips swollen and her dress wrinkled. She reeks of sweat and sex and Gaius has to steady himself before alerting her to his presence, almost unable to fathom how they can be having this conversation now, as the scent of her sin still clings to her.

“Merlin,” he says sharply, and she startles, some of the smile fading as she searches for him in the dark. He lights a candle and stares at the shadows it casts over her face. “Where have you been?”

Sheepishly, she begins smoothing her dress. “Would you believe me if I said I was out spying on Morgana and Morgause?”

“No.”

She nods, more to herself than him, and braces her hands on her thighs. “Well then. I guess that’s good because I wasn’t.”

“We need to talk,” he says, his voice so grave he can barely recognize it. He’s so tired in that moment, he feels every second of every year he’s lived.

Merlin exhales loudly through her teeth and throws herself into a chair across from him. Her eyes reflect his seriousness back at him. “Yes, we do. You would’ve found out soon anyway.” She steadies herself, meets his gaze. “I was with Arthur tonight.”

“And last night,” he says, trying not to be accusatory.

“Yes,” she says, blushing enough to be seen through the darkness. “That was the first time I’ve ever spent the whole night, I knew I shouldn’t but—”

His stomach drops at that, right through the floor, and ice begins inching its way up his spine. “The . . . first time you’ve . . . spent the whole night?” Which would imply that there had been times _before_ that where she _hadn’t_ , and— “Just how long has this been going on?!”

She squirms a little at the harshness of his tone. “Since right after the Questing Beast.”

The _Questing Beast_.

“That was two and a half years ago,” he whispers, and suddenly the horror is making it hard to _breathe_. Merlin has been lying with Arthur for _two and a half years_. This perversion has been going on right under his very nose for all that time, thanks to his own inaction.

“This cannot continue,” he rasps, trying to meet her eyes. But he can’t. He’ll find happiness there, innocence, and he realizes so very clearly in this moment that he’s about to destroy all of that for a very long time. “It has to end, imm—”

“Uncle.” She never calls him that, except for when they’re in the direst of circumstances. “I know what you’re going to say already.” Somehow, he doesn’t think so. “But I don’t care about social class, or who disapproves. Neither does Arthur. We’re in love.”

He stares mutely at her lips as they move, spouting her ignorant words, and wonders how many lies have fallen from them in the past to keep this from him.

“You have no future with Arthur,” he finally says, a moment after he realizes her mouth has stopped moving.

“But I do!” she insists, that smile returning. “I mean, there’s all that stuff the dragon said about destiny and coins and being two halves of a whole, but even beyond that, we’re going to be connected _forever_.”

 _Yes,_ he wants to say, _by blood._

“It’s why I was out all night last night. I told him. I was going to tell you soon, too, before he talks to Uther. If all goes well, he’ll have to ask you for my—”

“Talk to Uther?” he demands, anxiety spiking impossibly higher. Nothing good ever comes of that. “About what?”

“About asking you for my hand in marriage.”

The shock delays his response for several seconds, while Merlin stares at him expectantly. “Absolutely not!” he shouts, standing so abruptly his chair goes flying back. “This is insanity! You _cannot_ even be in a—a relationship with Arthur, much less _marry_ him!”

Merlin’s face twists into an ugly scowl, an expression he’s only ever seen directed at Morgana, and across the room, all the vials of poison on his shelves explode. This startles her, but she doesn’t back down.

“So—so you’re telling me that you would rather I bear a child out of wedlock than become the future Queen of Camelot?”

Gaius’s thoughts have never before died in his head in quite the way they do when she says that. He falters, sways, gropes for his chair.

_Bear a child._

The words hang between them, heavy in the air.

“I’m with child,” she finally says, when it becomes apparent he isn’t going to speak. “About a month along, I think, but you might find something different when you examine me. Arthur wants to make it his legitimate heir; he wants to be able to acknowledge it as his without dealing with the stigma of a bastard. He wants me to be his wife—his _Queen_ , one day. What’s so wrong with that?”

 _Everything,_ he wants to say. _Everything._

 

.

 

Merlin is in her second month of pregnancy when Morgana stages a coup d’état. Arthur had been making some meager progress in persuading his father that a future Queen of ignoble birth was better than a bloodline tainted with a bastard that might one day risk his reign, and Morgana had been unable to bear the thought of a serving girl one day sitting on the throne that was hers by birth.

She bays for Merlin’s blood, wanting nothing more than her head presented to her on a silver platter, but getting it isn’t as easy as she might’ve anticipated. Arthur takes Merlin and his most loyal knights and flees into the night, and though Morgana sends out the troops and the dogs and sets fire to the entire forest to try to flush them out, they elude her.

They take refuge in a cave while they regroup. Gaius treats sword wounds and broken bones and burns, Merlin for once acting as a competent and solicitous assistant, even though she’s pale and tired from pregnancy sickness. She’s gained a new stubbornness from her hatred of Morgana, a drive to survive that can only come from being hunted like an animal.

 _You should hate Uther, not each other,_ Gaius wants to tell them, all of them. _You’re all his neglected children, damaged by his madness._

But wounds have been made that cannot be healed. Sister has been turned against sister, and now one has to die.

Merlin is more powerful than Morgana, just as Balinora was more powerful than Vivienne. Her experience makes Morgause the real danger, but even then, Gaius thinks Merlin would prevail. She could be the deciding factor in getting Camelot back into legitimate hands. She’s the only advantage Arthur has, and she knows it.

So he uses it for all it’s worth. As she grows exhausted from vomiting and body aches and hungry from eating barely enough for one when she’s feeding two, he starts mentioning the dangers she’ll face as the child grows, and the complications that could arise during labor and delivery. They happen so frequently, and Merlin does have such narrow hips.

“What would Arthur do if you died?” he asks her, because if nothing else, Merlin has proven over the years that she’s willing to sacrifice anything for Arthur, no matter how much it hurts her. “He would have no chance of reclaiming his crown.”

“What would you have me do?” she demands, like it’s a rhetorical question, like her state is one that cannot be altered. Maybe she doesn’t know it can be.

He offers her pennyroyal, explains the effects. He tells her that it’s the only thing that makes any sense, that she can’t risk her duty to Arthur and Camelot by giving birth in a cave after months of malnutrition to a child that won’t even be legitimate.

She stares at the proffered flower like it’s poison, and when she finally gazes up at him, she doesn’t look like she even knows him anymore.

 

.

 

She doesn’t speak a word to him for months. He watches from a distance as she clings to Arthur’s side, trying to cheer him up as they plot against their half-sister. She stays rail thin save for her belly, which grows steadily until her condition is apparent to everyone.

The knights slap Arthur on the back in congratulations and take to calling Merlin ‘my lady’ as a sign of their acceptance of her as their future Queen.

Gwen, the only other woman in the camp, stays in a permanent state of excitement, letting out Merlin’s dresses when they get too tight and knitting blankets and socks for the baby from scraps of material. The two discuss names constantly, basing their choices in part on what would go best behind the title ‘Prince’.

Merlin insists that she’ll be bearing a son, like any woman who’s ever felt the pressure to provide a male heir. Gaius just hopes she’ll be giving birth to something resembling human.

He’s heard of children born from a union of related parents, of the deformities and afflictions it can cause. Even if the body is unaffected, the mind can be damaged, not developing properly or slipping easily away into madness. Children like that are never princes, no matter what blood they have; they’re exposed or locked away where no one will see.

And if that happens to this child, what will he say to Merlin? What will he say when she damns him for his silence and his inaction?

Yet, what can he say now? In the midst of all this upheaval, when alliances are shaky at best and no one knows who to trust save for Arthur and Merlin, who have absolute faith in each other, how can he tell them? If he broke them apart now, at this time, he could be damning them all.

Gaius has kept secrets for a long time, his own and Uther’s and many others.

But it has never been this painful.

 

.

 

“Arthur’s worried I’ll die in childbirth,” says Merlin.

Gaius looks up, startled. He gives her examinations routinely—Arthur insisted on it—but she hasn’t spoken to him during any of them. She’s at the end of her eighth month, and though there’s no definite way to determine, his instinct tells him the child will be coming very soon.

“I imagine he would be,” he replies, and continues prodding her abdomen. The child kicks his hand, which he clings to as a good sign.

She shakes her head, staring at the roof of the tent. “His mother probably wouldn’t have died if not for the magic, you know that.”

“He doesn’t.”

She purses her lips and continues her staring, blinking very occasionally. He takes her pulse and inspects her eyes for cloudiness, checks the inside of her mouth and reaches down to feel the lymph nodes in her neck. She’s too thin, much too thin, and white as a sheet, but her breathing and heart rate are both normal. She’s also too warm, but most pregnant women are. In this cave, it might even give her an advantage.

“Do you honestly think I’ll die in childbirth, Gaius?” she asks, finally looking at him. “Is that why you’ve been so against this?”

He struggles for words. “That’s . . . one of many reasons, Merlin.”

“What are the others?”

He thinks that there would probably be no better opportunity than this, and though there are so many reasons he _shouldn’t_ tell her, he wants to, so badly, just to free himself of the burden and clear his conscience.

But, even as the words come to the tip of his tongue, he can’t bring himself to say them.

“The timing,” he tells her. “Even if the child had been one of the knights’, spending the duration of the pregnancy in a cave still would’ve been bad, but you’re bearing a child to Uther’s only legitimate heir, and he openly acknowledges it as his. Morgana’s grasp on Uther’s throne is tenuous at best; she’s spent her entire life as Gorlois’s daughter and that is still how most see her. If she got her hands on this child, she could put it on the throne as a figurehead while keeping all the real power for herself, and very few would question it.”

Merlin’s head lowers, her eyes close. “I wish I’d killed her,” she murmurs, so quietly his aged ears can barely hear it. “That day.”

She doesn’t need to specify. It’s been years but it’s still burned into both their memories.

“I felt so guilty about it. I was happy that Morgause had saved her. But now I wish she hadn’t.”

“I think we all wish that, my girl.”

Her face is turned down, but he sees her shoulders shake. “She was my friend, Gaius. I loved her. And she had—had Gwen and Arthur and even Uther. I think she was the only person he really cared about. But she threw all of it away, for Morgause.”

“They’re sisters.”

“I would never do something like that,” she hisses bitterly. “Never hurt anybody innocent just for—for _blood_ , for a sibling.”

(Gaius thinks about that day, seared into his memory, when Merlin told him she’d slipped Morgana hemlock.

 _It was her or Arthur,_ she’d sobbed. _It wasn’t her fault, but it was her or Arthur.)_

He pulls Merlin to him, tucking her head under his chin, and thinks: _You already have._

 

.

 

Merlin goes into labor in the middle of the night. Gaius is awoken when they barge into the medical tent: her, doubled over in pain and barely walking, Gwen chattering uncontrollably in her excitement, Arthur consumed with panicked hysteria. He clutches Merlin’s hand, his arm wrapped around her middle as he helps her move, and the expression on his face is something Gaius has never seen on him before and never thought he would. It’s beyond simple fear, or dread.

It’s _horror._

“ _Please_ ,” he begs her, his voice cracking with stress. It’s the first time Gaius has ever heard the Prince implore anyone for anything. “Please, Merlin—”

“I’m not going to die, Arthur,” she grits out through teeth clenched against the pain. “I _promise_ you.” She raises her hand to the side of his face, and he calms somewhat, but the anxiety is still there, simmering just under the surface.

It seems almost cruel to ask him to leave, but men have never been permitted in the birthing room and Gaius doesn’t need to deal with someone ready to fly back into hysterics at the slightest hint of a problem.

“Sire, I’m afraid I must ask that you to go outside. Men should not be present during such a thing as this; it’s hardly proper.”

“You’re a man!” Arthur shouts, gesturing at him wildly.

“I realize that, my Lord, but I’m also the only physician available. We have no other choice. Gwen will do any physical examinations, but I have to be here to supervise.”

Gwen looks a bit peaked at the mention of ‘physical examinations’, but they’ve been in agreement that she’ll do it for quite some time, since no midwife could be present. Merlin’s uncle or no, it would be unthinkably inappropriate for him to do it.

“Don’t worry, Sire,” she says soothingly. “We all know Gaius is an excellent physician. Everything’s going to be fine, and in a few hours you’ll be a father!”

Arthur glares at Gaius, who stares back impassively, waiting.

Finally, he presses a kiss to Merlin’s forehead and whispers something in her ear, and then lets himself be led out of the tent, where some of the knights are hovering.

Sir Gwaine’s suggestion that they pass the time with some of the liquor he made from fermented vegetables is muffled by the closing of the tent flap and then entirely drowned out by Merlin’s groan as she clenches up with a contraction.

Gaius has attended births before, though he’s always been better equipped. There’s never much that can be done, but had they been back in Camelot, he could’ve given her herbs to slightly speed the process and ease the pain. Here, all he can do is pace and wait and dread.

The first stage of the labor is hard and long. Gwen babbles apologies as she does the examinations and bustles back and forth to refresh the water when it grows lukewarm. She tries to keep the sweat off of Merlin’s face and neck, systematically running wet rags across her skin. She gives her sips of water when she’s thirsty and fans her when she complains of being hot.

Merlin pants and writhes, growing increasingly incoherent as the pains become more intense. She’s not as frail as her willowy frame might suggest—she’s survived poison and magical attacks and battle injuries—but Gaius can see her losing strength with each hour that passes, her body slowly but surely giving out under the stress.

He has flashes of Ygraine, more than twenty years ago, screaming and bleeding and dying. Her labor hadn’t been a particularly difficult one—it had been over within the night, the magic taking its pound of flesh only after Arthur had been born. The bleeding simply hadn’t stopped.

Merlin, on the other hand, is suffering for very little progress. The night and following day pass with only partial dilation, and Gaius’s dread of seeing the child is overcome by a fear of how they may have to deliver it.

Women don’t survive having a child cut out of their womb. It’s the last resort, only done if there is no other possible alternative, but the threat is always there, lingering over any birth. The midwife always brings a knife, and Gaius has prepared one today. It sits next to his small collection of herbs on the other side of the tent, glinting dully in the candlelight, mocking him.

But it hasn’t come to that point, yet. Merlin suffers, hyperventilating until she vomits, digging her nails into the palms of her hands until they bleed, screaming herself into hoarseness. Tears track down her face and she begs him to make it stop, but he sits and waits and watches.

Gwen checks, again and again.

And on the second night, she tells him what he wants to hear.

“It’s going to be over soon, Merlin,” he tells her, truly joyful that an end to this purgatory is in sight. “You can start pushing.”

Merlin cracks open one bloodshot eye. “I’m so tired,” she whispers, voice raw and dry.

“I know you are,” he says patiently, pushing some of her sweat soaked hair out of her face. “But you have to push.”

Merlin does try. She grits her teeth and clenches her muscles, her legs tensing and spreading as she bears down, but Gaius can see that it isn’t doing much. Nothing drains energy from the human body like pain, and she’s been in a constant state of it for hours. Now there’s hardly anything left for the active role she has to play in the labor.

Merlin tears at the furs she’s laying on, the pain prohibiting her any reprieve, even fainting. She thrashes and bucks and _pushes_ until she has to gasp for air, her chest heaving and tears of frustration streaming from her eyes.

On the third night, she grabs Gwen’s hand with both of hers and pulls her down close, breathing something out through sobs. Gaius listens closely and manages to catch it, though her voice is so gravelly the words are hard to distinguish.

“If I die—”

“You’re not going to die,” Gwen insists forcefully.

“—tell Arthur that—” Her voice breaks, her hands clenching around the maid’s. “—I was always happy to serve him. I know he’ll be a great king someday. Just—just, make sure to get on him if he starts being a prat.” She laughs a little, but it dies in a hiss of discomfort. Her legs stiffen, toes curling, but she bears through it, staring desperately at Gwen. “Don’t let him become like Uther. Don’t let him think there’s anyone to blame. If I’m to die for our child, I’ll do so with no regrets.”

“Don’t talk like that, Merlin, you’re going to be—”

“But most of all, tell him that . . . I love him, so much. That he made me . . . happy.”

Gwen’s protests die on her tongue, Merlin pinning her with eyes sharpened by the pain until the maid drops her head. “I’ll tell him,” she murmurs. “I promise.”

Satisfied, Merlin gives up on the effort required to talk and retreats into herself, keening with each new pain. Gaius continues encouraging her to push, but they grow more and more ineffectual as time passes.

The knife sits there on the other side of the tent, always in the corner of his eye. It beckons to him, telling him that at this point, it would almost be a mercy.

He tells her to push one more time.

“I just did,” she pants feebly, and he can hear the unspoken _no more, please, no more._

The knife glints.

And then, Hunith arrives.

As soon as she grabs Merlin’s hand, the girl’s eyes flutter open, and her relief at seeing her mother safe is palpable. Morgana’s petty plan to twist the knife in Merlin by razing Ealdor had been something else hanging over their heads this entire time, the girl having spent the last days before her labor terrified that Lancelot wouldn’t get there before the village was destroyed.

But Lancelot is nothing if not capable, and now here she is, looking shocked and confused but otherwise unharmed. Her gaze finds his, demanding answers, but he shakes his head and turns away. What answers can he give?

“Is Sir Lancelot the father?” she asks anyway, and what Gaius wouldn’t give to be able to say yes.

“Oh, no,” Gwen replies, chuckling amusedly at the thought.

Hunith holds her peace after that, turning her focus to her daughter. She whispers soothing nonsense in her ear and strokes her hand, begging her to follow Gaius’s instructions.

And somehow, somewhere, Merlin seems to find one last reserve of strength. It comes on gradually, her eyes growing a bit more lucid as her pushes begin to show more effort. Eventually, she forces herself up onto her elbows and digs in her heels, and with a shriek muffled by gritted teeth, Gaius sees something.

“The head is crowning,” he announces, and though it means that in a matter of moments he’s going to be seeing the product of a brother bedding his own sister, he doesn’t care because it’s finally going to be _over_.

He prepares himself to catch. Hunith murmurs more words of support.

Merlin shrieks and _pushes_ , with every ounce of strength left in her body.

Then she falls silent and a new set of screams begin.

Gaius isn’t sure he even wants to look. He’s feared and agonized over this moment for so long, and now that it’s here he just wants to hold his breath and wait for it to be over, to not have to see.

But he’s come this far. Now he has to look at the result of his silence.

“It’s a boy!” Gwen announces, just as his gaze turns downward to his arms.

It’s like sucking in air after being suffocated. The relief is that great.

The boy is doubtlessly Arthur’s, not that Gaius had ever thought otherwise. He already has a dusting of blond hair, and the resemblance in the face is unmistakable. The blue eyes, blinking blearily, could’ve come from either parent, though the cheekbones are unmistakably Merlin’s.

He’s perfectly formed, down to each toe. There’s nothing abnormal about him.

Gwen rushes past him, on her way to spread the news to the men waiting outside, but she pauses to grab the knife and offer it to him. He moves on automatic, tingling as he comes down from the fear, taking it and severing the umbilical cord in a clean cut.

The child shrieks as he takes him to the bowl of water beside Merlin and begins cleaning him, wiping off the blood and umbilical residue. He counts as he does so, fingers and toes and eyes and ears, a mouth and a nose, everything in its place.

This day, all of his nightmares have been undone. But the relief brings no happiness with it.

As blue eyes stare up at him from a face that’s half Merlin and half Arthur and overwhelmingly _Uther_ , he cannot bring himself to fake any joy, to pretend to be excited about this birth.

He cannot smile.

 

.

 

While Merlin and the child sleep, Arthur sitting attentively by their bedside, Gaius and Hunith fight. He takes her down one of the caves’ rocky, narrow passages, to a chamber with a small, gritty pond they sometimes use to bathe. No one’s here now, though, no prying ears, so they can speak freely.

They fight like they’ve never fought before. She screams at him, _shrieks_ , calling him careless and inattentive and a horrible guardian, someone who failed so utterly in looking after her child that she can’t even comprehend it.

He counters, calls her a fool for sending Merlin to Camelot in the first place, a fool to think that he could protect her from everything to be found there. He’s put himself on the pyre in her place before, but there was nothing he could’ve done to keep her from Arthur save for telling her the truth, and by then, it had been too late. Hunith had been content to keep Balinora’s secrets and he had idiotically followed her lead, hoping to save Merlin the pain of hating a father and a sister.

They accuse until they’re hoarse, shifting the blame back and forth, telling each other what they should’ve done differently, and somewhere along the line, as Hunith’s rush of shocked horror fades, their anger wanes. Both of them know that neither one of them is solely to blame; they had both had opportunities to avert this, yet they had done nothing.

“What have we done, Gaius?” she asks weakly. Her energy has left her, leaving her tucked against the wall, rock scraping her skin. “What have we done?”

“We’ve failed her,” he says, and he’s not entirely sure whom he means. Merlin, who’s become the victim of the lies they told to protect her, so twisted up in them they’ll never be able to undo it, or Balinora, who entrusted them with her daughter, only for them to hurt her with their inaction.

Maybe, it’s both.

 

.

 

Arthur isn’t there when Gaius returns to the physician’s tent. Merlin sits on her makeshift bed of furs, holding the baby and grinning.

“I sent him to get me some cold water,” she tells him as he presses a hand to her forehead. He’d been worried about fever, but there isn’t any sign of it. “I could’ve asked Gwen, but the role reversal was a little satisfying.”

Gaius shoots her a look.

“ _Really_ satisfying,” she admits with a bit of a smirk. It vanishes immediately when the child stirs in her arms, keening low in his throat and blinking up at her. She shushes him, soothing and rocking to the best of her abilities, but he seems determined not to go back to sleep.

“I know you’re not hungry, I just fed you. Are you upset because Daddy’s not here? He’ll be back soon. But Uncle Gaius is here! Great-Uncle, actually. He was the physician who helped me deliver you. Maybe I should name you after him . . .”

Gaius’s eyes dart up to stare at her sharply. It’s flattering, in a way, and had this been under any other circumstances he would’ve been humbled and willing to go along with it. But as it is, he just can’t.

“I thought you and Gwen had been discussing Nicolas or Elric.”

She shrugs, pursing her lips. “I like them both, but . . . I don’t know . . .” She trails off, tilting her head a bit. “You want to know a secret, Gaius? I know Arthur wanted a boy, but I was actually kind of hoping for a girl. To name after my—to name after Balinora.”

He feels guilt, then, contradicting and twisting up with everything else he’s been experiencing for the past months. He knows he should’ve told her the whole truth a long time ago, yet the small part he did reveal, about her relationship to Balinora, had left nothing but grief over a lost mother in its wake.

“Your mother,” he says, pausing briefly. He thinks of Balinora, so bitter, consumed and sustained by her hatred. She’d been like a flower dying in the darkness, crumpling at the edges. “She explained her name to me once, a very long time ago. ‘Nora’ meant ‘light’ in the Druids’ ancient tongue; ‘Bal’ referred to an ancient god. Balinora meant ‘Light of Ba’al.’”

Pieces of memory escape from the place he usually keeps them, buried deep beneath the surface. He remembers her as she was before, darkly beautiful, vibrant with magic and power and life. Details return, things he hasn’t let himself think about since she left, even when Arthur brought back the news of her death.

He smiles. “Uther used to call her Nora. She hated it.”

“Nora,” Merlin murmurs. “Bali—Bali—nora. Balin—nora. What about just ‘Balin’?”

He thinks about Balinora, withering with her hatred of Uther. The loathing had burnt deep in her veins like a poison, until there had been nothing else, until she’d hated her own daughter just for being his.

Now there’s this boy, the son of two of Uther’s children, and a part of him knows that, had she been here, Balinora would’ve despised him.

But another part of him looks at the object lying on the furs beside Merlin. It’s a wooden carving, a miniature dragon created with time-consuming, intricate detail. He’d first seen Merlin with it almost two years ago, her hugging it to her chest as she wept for the mother she’d only known for a scarce few days. She’d kept it close ever since, holding tight to the last fragment of someone she’d loved.

Looking at it, images of Balinora war with each other in his mind. He sees her spiteful, decaying with the hate, and also how she was before, beautiful and benevolent.

Time heals all wounds, and he thinks that maybe, it healed some of Balinora’s, too. In her last days, her last moments, he wonders if she didn’t stop hating Merlin for that part of Uther in her; if, maybe, she’d loved her.

He knows that, had she been here, she would’ve been horrified that the child was Arthur’s, just as horrified as he is. She might’ve hated him, for being the ultimate product of lies and sin and the web they’ve all woven for themselves.

She wouldn’t have wanted him to be named for her.

But looking at Merlin now, tired but radiant as a new mother and so _happy_ , so blissful in her ignorance, he finds that he cannot deny her. Maybe Balinora would’ve understood.

“Balin it is, then,” he says.

**Author's Note:**

> I milked that childbirth scene for all the drama I could, oh yes I did. I think I'd also just read about poor Milla Jovovich being in labor for three days with her first child.
> 
> 'Ordinary Vanity' is a song from the Silent Hill 2 soundtrack. I read somewhere that sometimes people who are related and don't know it are attracted to each other because of the similarities to themselves they subconsciously see in the other person.
> 
> This was written before I ever knew anything of The Hobbit so I just chose Balin as a derivative of Balinor. The "explanation" of Balinora's name was completely made up based on what I know of the name 'Hannibal', which means 'grace of Ba'al'. 'Nora' means 'light' in Arabic and Balinor has the same 'Bal' element so I went from there.
> 
> I wrote three sequels to that original story and I still never got to the 'Merlin finds out Uther's her dad' part of the prompt. I do have a plan for it, though.
> 
> It's a pity they made Morgana turn evil on the show. I mean, I love villains but she was so awesome when she was good.
> 
> Thank you so much for the kudos and comments on 'Sustained by Hate'! I never thought it would get such a good response.
> 
> -Anna


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